This Website has been designed to use JavaScript. You will
not be able to experience all enhanced visual features of this website with JavaScript disabled.
Please enable JavaScript in your Internet Browser if possible.

Lytes Cary, Somerton, England

Record Id: 2180

Site is open to the public. Opening may be limited,
please check Visitor Information for any restrictions.

Loading...
Please turn on Javascript to view this map if possible.

Brief description of site

Lytes Cary Manor has garden enclosures in the Elizabethan manner, dating to 1907-20 by Sir Walter Jenner. The gardens were restored in the 1960s by the National Trust in the Jekyll tradition. The house was once home to Henry Lyte, a medieval herbalist, and the gardens include a herbal border.

Brief history of site

A stone chapel was constructed in the mid-14th century, and a courtyard manor house developed around it. The house was completed in the early-16th century, but by 1835 was in serious disrepair. Sir Walter and Lady Jenner bought the site in 1907, and commissioned the architect C E Ponting to undertake the restoration of the surviving elements of the 16th-century manor, and to rebuild the north and west ranges in a sympathetic late 17th-century style. The gardens comprise a series of compartments and inter-related vistas.